Call Center Management Featured Article
When Customers Feel Like Parrots: Eliminating the Need for Customers to Repeat Themselves
While many companies and their contact centers have a stated goal of improving the customer experience, this is often a lip-service goal that sits on the top of every company’s list each year, though little is ever done about it. Companies may onboard a little new technology or boost the amount of training agents get, but most find that it makes very little difference.
The problem, generally, is that companies look at customer relationships from their own perspectives and not the customer’s. Imagine a customer who calls in to solve a billing problem. He or she might provide a name and account number or telephone number up front to the interactive voice response (IVR) unit, and then again to the first agent who picks up. If that agent can’t help, the call will be transferred, and the customer must repeat his or her identifying information and explain the problem all over again. Now let’s say a manager is needed to solve the problem…the customer needs to repeat the information all over again.
From the contact center’s perspective, it seems perfectly reasonable to have a customer repeat himself over and over again. After all, each time a call is transferred it’s being transferred to “new ears” who are unaware of the problem. From the customer’s perspective, it’s an aggravating, ludicrous exercise in futility that will likely cause him or her to vow never to do business with you again.
It’s a ridiculously common problem. According to research commissioned by Aspect (News - Alert) Software, 89 percent of customers identified that “repeating-myself” syndrome is one of their biggest sources of irritation. Others include a lack of consistency and continuity in customer service (such as using two different communications channels that are disjointed from one another, or receiving conflicting information) and receiving the wrong information from the contact center.
It seems clear that while a customer is just one person and expects to be treated as such, to many companies, a customer is simply a series of transactions that bear no relation to one another. For companies that truly wish to improve the customer experience, this is the crux of the matter and where investments will be best spent: unifying the channels, eliminating the silos and personalizing the customer relationship.
"It's no secret customer service has a long-standing stigma of causing headaches and hassles for consumers,” said Jim Freeze, CMO of Aspect, in a statement. “Part of the challenge is today's more mobile and empowered consumer has higher expectations and demands interactions on their terms. And by and large, brands have not adapted to this shifting relationship. The answer for companies is to strive to provide an omnichannel experience, where an interaction can start on one channel or device and seamlessly transition to another without the customer feeling alienated or forgotten."
A real solution to the problem will require investment in technologies that will enable a true multichannel contact center presence. It may also require a redesigned training program for agents and even contact center managers. Different companies may require different solutions, but in the end, the goal is the same: customer service that is customer-centric, and not call center-centric.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi